TTM+Copper Hybrid method

[Shilpan Patel]

Hey guys, I'm quarantining a sailfin tang with Cupramine currently. It had a week observation and now almost 2 weeks of copper.
I was learning more about ich and its life cycle, and thus why people prefer 30 days of copper rather than 14 as stated on the bottle. I then see that good practice is to to wait 1-2 weeks after cupramine to ensure no white spots develop post-treatment.

My question is, assuming I've kept copper above 0.3 the whole time (i'm keeping it above 0.4 with almost daily testing to be sure), and assuming the fish doesn't display any other diseases after 5 weeks, why not immediately scoop out the fish after treatment, put it in a bucket with some seachem cuprisorb to remove traces of copper and then put the fish straight into the DT? Even if there was a freak ich cyst still alive in the quarantine tank, it wouldn't be able to infect my fish since I take it out right?

Sorry if there is something obvious that I'm missing here..

 

[Brew12]

Hey guys, I'm quarantining a sailfin tang with Cupramine currently. It had a week observation and now almost 2 weeks of copper.
I was learning more about ich and its life cycle, and thus why people prefer 30 days of copper rather than 14 as stated on the bottle. I then see that good practice is to to wait 1-2 weeks after cupramine to ensure no white spots develop post-treatment.

My question is, assuming I've kept copper above 0.3 the whole time (i'm keeping it above 0.4 with almost daily testing to be sure), and assuming the fish doesn't display any other diseases after 5 weeks, why not immediately scoop out the fish after treatment, put it in a bucket with some seachem cuprisorb to remove traces of copper and then put the fish straight into the DT? Even if there was a freak ich cyst still alive in the quarantine tank, it wouldn't be able to infect my fish since I take it out right?

Sorry if there is something obvious that I'm missing here..

You can do that, and it is what I recommend to people who don't want to do a full QT protocol. This should take care of Ich and Velvet. What you can miss doing this are flukes, internal parasites, and possibly some bacterial infections.

 

[Shilpan Patel]

Ahh I see, I haven’t seen any more scratching or skin lesions, so I simply assumed flukes wouldn’t be an issue.
Maybe I’ll consider doing a prazipro treatment after the copper finishes.

For some reason flukes and worms don’t get through NZ customs very often but Ich does. I wonder if it’s because our fish stores have Ich in their tanks... I don’t really know. I’ve never seen flukes or worms in the short 3 years I’ve been reefing.

I will research prazi-pro then, if I’ve gone to this much hassle I’d rather do a full quarantine.

 

[Shilpan Patel]

Is it still good practice to freshwater dip the tang to look for flukes? I might just do that after that copper treatment finishes, then put the tang back into a bucket of QT tank water to settle and then acclimate to my DT.

Ofc if I find flukes It can go back in the QT for treatment. Or do you find that very often flukes can be present without any signs even if doing a FW Dip?

I guess the fact that prazipro can be used in the DT makes it tempting to treat it in there if I ever see it.

 

[Brew12]

Is it still good practice to freshwater dip the tang to look for flukes? I might just do that after that copper treatment finishes, then put the tang back into a bucket of QT tank water to settle and then acclimate to my DT.

Ofc if I find flukes It can go back in the QT for treatment. Or do you find that very often flukes can be present without any signs even if doing a FW Dip?

I guess the fact that prazipro can be used in the DT makes it tempting to treat it in there if I ever see it.

I've almost always found flukes when purchasing fish online by using a FW dip.

I haven't encountered them yet, but there are some flukes that are Prazi resistant. Hope I never do come across those.

 

[Antics]

Which is why TTM + prazi + observation is ideal for quickly eliminating ich and flukes while also giving you time to observe for velvet and infections. Humble and a few others have made a lot of threads on proper protocol but if I'm remembering correctly the above stated route is the quickest way to get a fish safely into your display tank. The downside is it's more labor intensive than using a CP or Copper theraputic tank.

 

[Shilpan Patel]

Ok thank you, I will employ the freshwater dip post copper to look for flukes. I’m sure there will be a good write up on here somewhere about how to FW dip safely. If the FW dip is negative I’ll put the tang back into a bucket of copper water from the QT, add cuprisorb, then acclimate to my display. 1. Is it safe to come down on the copper concentration really quickly? It won’t shock The tang right?

Yes I was thinking about TTM actually. But it meant buying another tank, filter, heater , pump plus all the salt required for another 40 gallon tank suitable for a tang. The salt especially is quite expensive here since we ship it all the way overseas
(2. converted it is 119 USD for a 22kg bucket of Red Sea salt-how does that compare with you guys??)

I might try TTM for a smaller fish next like a fire fish, by using some buckets.